Sitarist mourning loss of prized instrument

Kartik Seshadri, at his Encinitas home last week, shows some of the damage to his sitar he said was inflicted on the instrument during a British Airlines flight last September.
— Bill Wechter/U-T San Diego

Kartik Seshadri, at his Encinitas home last week, shows some of the damage to his sitar he said was inflicted on the instrument during a British Airlines flight last September.
/ Bill Wechter/U-T San Diego

ENCINITAS  Indian classical musician Kartik Seshadri compares the destruction of the prized sitar he played and toured with for 38 years to the pain of losing a limb.

“It drives me to tears if I think about it. There’s grief mixed in with so much pain,” he said.

On March 6, the Encinitas musician sued British Airways for mishandling the sitar on a flight home from London last September. He believes the instrument was stowed during the 11-hour flight in an unpressurized cargo hold where it was subjected to temperatures as low as -70 to -100 degrees Fahrenheit. It arrived in a near-frozen state and has since cracked, lost chunks of its well-aged varnish and become unplayable.

A sitar expert in India valued the instrument at more than $100,000, but British Airways has offered just $1,760 in compensation, an amount that has Seshadri seeing red.

Kartik Seshadri plays the sitar that was damaged last fall in this undated publicity photo.
— Kartik Seshadri

Kartik Seshadri plays the sitar that was damaged last fall in this undated publicity photo.
/ Kartik Seshadri

“It’s something priceless,” said Seshadri, 57. “I can’t begin to put a value on it. It’s a Stradivarius sort of sitar. It was made for me 38 years ago by the original Kanial who crafted instruments for some of the greatest musicians of our tradition.”

Airline travel is a painful reality for musicians who travel with large fragile instruments they can’t store in an overhead bin. The late Ravi Shankar, Seshadri’s mentor, had to borrow instruments for a 2005 concert in France when two of his sitars were broken during a flight from Lebanon. In early 2013, a bow stick valued at $20,000 by German cellist Alban Gerhardt was snapped in two by a Washington, D.C., baggage inspector. And last summer, Seshadri’s friend Wu Man lost her $50,000 pipa — a Chinese four-string lute — when it was dropped and broken by a flight attendant in New Haven, Conn.

In most of these cases, the airlines worked with the musicians to replace or repair the instruments, but Seshadri said British Airways has refused to offer any more than $1,760. That’s the liability limit for damaged baggage under an international travel agreement known as the Montreal Convention.

Scott Cunningham, an attorney for British Airways at Condon & Forsyth law firm in Los Angeles, did not return calls for this story. The airline has filed motions to move the case, which was filed in San Diego Superior Court, to federal jurisdiction, and to dismiss Seshadri’s claim for emotional distress. The two sides will meet May 12 in a federal district court in San Diego.

Seshadri’s attorney Chris Dryden said the success of their case will hinge on proving that a British Airways baggage handler showed a “willful disregard” in handling the four-foot, 20-string instrument, which was stored inside both a canvas suitcase and hard-shell fiberglass case and tagged as fragile.

Some of the several "Fragile" stickers Kartik Seshadri said were affixed to the sitar case when it was damaged.
— Bill Wechter/U-T San Diego

Some of the several "Fragile" stickers Kartik Seshadri said were affixed to the sitar case when it was damaged.
/ Bill Wechter/U-T San Diego

“You could take somebody off the street and give them two minutes of information and if they saw something that’s marked fragile, they’d know to take more care not to expose it to the elements,” said Dryden, with Global Legal Resources in Sorrento Valley.

The incident occurred on Sept. 15, when Seshadri was flying back from a concert in India in memory of his mentor Encinitas resident Shankar, who died in 2012. After changing planes at London’s Heathrow Airport, Seshadri made it back to San Diego but his sitar did not. The instrument was located and flown to San Diego the following day, but when Seshadri got it home and took it out of its case, he was shocked at what he discovered.